The Ministry of Civil Aviation has floated a cabinet note for Hyderabad and Bengaluru airports stake sale for an in-principle nod.
The government intends to sell its stake in the four joint venture metro airports of Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Bengaluru but the process has been started for Bengaluru and Hyderabad first. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) holds about a 13% stake respectively in the two airports of Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International airport is owned and managed by a public-private venture, GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL). Its stakeholders hold the AAI and the Government of Telangana, and a private consortium between GMR Group and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad. Currently, Bengaluru airport is a public-private venture with stakeholders involving Karnataka State Industrial Investment and Development Corporation (KSIIDC) for 13%, AAI for 13%, and 74% is held by private companies, Fairfax Financial 54% and Siemens Project Ventures 20%. The Ministry of Aviation is also working on a cabinet note for privatisation of 13 airports, where six major airports will be clubbed with seven minor airports, a source said. As many as 25 AAI airports have been considered for monetisation, under the recently declared 6-lakh-crore worth National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP). During FY22-25, the indicative monetisation value has been fixed at Rs 20,782 crore, out of this the government anticipates Rs 10,000 crore from stake sales in Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru airports, and the left Rs 10,782 crore has been estimated from the monetisation of 25 AAI airports. The government intends to get private players for Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Trichy, Amritsar, Indore, and Raipur in FY22 and Calicut, Surat, Nagpur, Patna, Coimbatore, Madurai, Ranchi, and Jodhpur in FY23. Image SourceAlso read: AAI to soon exit government's joint venture airports
